Behind the election campaign’s pantomime baddies, the noble democratic dream of the Founding Fathers lives on in the seat of power, Washington DC
Politics in America is like pantomime with nuclear weapons. If you were to throw a billion dollars at a high school popularity contest, and put the fate of the world on the result, you would get the past 18 months of the US election campaign. We’ve had potential presidents discussing the size of their manhood, eating bacon off a machine gun and claiming the pyramids were used to store grain, not dead pharaohs. This isn’t democracy; this is electile dysfunction.
But, at least, it’s been great TV. And that’s a problem. There’s a term: hyperreality. It means the blurring of fiction and the real world. This election, America has taken a hyperdrive to the hyperreal. Presidential debates are introduced like boxing matches, with winners decided by appearance not ideas; political adverts look they’ve been churned out by Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth, only meaner; rallies are like an episode of The Apprentice on eviction night — even the beloved ‘U-S-A’ cheer (surely the most unimaginative chant in the history of crowds) has been hijacked by the even more horrifying ‘Lock Her Up!’ And that’s all we get. I’ve been in a media bubble so long now I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be fed anything but the Hillary and Trump sandwich (extra bologna with a small pickle, if you were wondering).
This story is from the January / February 2017 edition of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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This story is from the January / February 2017 edition of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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